"Composition with yellow, red, and blue" by Piet Mondrian

Mondrian is the most famous De Stijl artist. De Stijl is a Dutch art movement of the early 1900's. De Stijl translates to "The Style", and the artists connected with the movement concentrated on composition. One of their goals was to eliminate the touch of the artist and eliminate emotion, so very little brushwork is evident. The paintings seem almost machine created. The artists created nonobjective art, so it is not meant to represent anything, it is purely about composition. Mondrian, like many De Stijl artists used only primary colors plus black and white because they are the only pure colors. Mondrian also used only rectangles. Mondrian's compositions are asymmetrically balanced. Often he will balance a large colored rectangle with a couple of small colored rectangles. These paintings are very aesthetically pleasing, as they should be considering their only purpose is composition. Mondrian's compositions are so pleasing that the fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent used the design of one of Mondrian's paintings to create dresses in 1965 even calling them the "Mondrian Collection". De Stijl art is very versatile because it is so simple. I even am using it as inspiration for a design project for yearbook. I wanted to have a sleek, clean, modern design for a practice yearbook cover design, and I turned to Mondrian. Some of the De Stijl artists were architects, creating whole houses with the same principles which only furthers the point of De Stijl's versatility. In De Stijl houses, the entire house, including the furniture, is executed only in primary colors plus black and white. I think these compositions are calming, and I love immersing myself in these pieces.